Andy Steven who is a colleague of mine working in the EMEA vCloud Air team asked me what Operating Systems are supported in VMware vCloud Air? This isn’t the first time I have been asked this question, so I thought I would quickly publish the list, to provide easy reference to lookup which vCloud Air Operating Systems are supported.
As most of you know, VMware vCloud Air leverages vCloud Director to enable the cloud capabilities needed to provide a public cloud service. vCloud Director supports a wide variety of 32 bit and 64 bit Operating Systems.
vCloud Air Supported Operating Systems
The current Operating Systems supported by vCloud Director are:
Microsoft Windows | Linux |
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 64-bit | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 |
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 |
Microsoft Windows 8 | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 |
Microsoft Windows 8.1 | SUSE Enterprise Linux 11 |
Microsoft Windows 7 | SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 |
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 | Oracle Linux 6 |
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit | Oracle Linux 5 |
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 | Oracle Linux 4 |
Microsoft Windows Small Business Sever 32-bit | CentOS |
Microsoft Windows Vista | Ubuntu Linux |
Microsoft Windows XP Professional | Other 3.x Linux |
Microsoft Windows 2000 | Other 2.6.x Linux |
Microsoft Windows NT | Other 2.4.x Linux |
Microsoft Windows 3.1 | Other Linux |
Microsoft MS-DOS |
But thats not all, as vCloud Air runs on VMware vSphere, the full list of vCloud Air supported Operating Systems and application are in the vSphere HCL: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software&testConfig=16
Its quite an extensive list of Operating Systems supported, and if anyone is interested they can read Chris Colotti’s blog on running Windows 3.1 in vCloud Air here: http://www.chriscolotti.us/vmware/hybrid-cloud-vmware/vmware-vcloud-hybrid-service-runs-windows-3-11/
Is it true, that I can run a client OS on vcloud Air, even though that would be violating Microsoft Licensing Regulations? (no Client OS on shared infrastructure)
If you buy a dedicated cloud you can use your own licenses. If you use a Virtual Private Cloud (shared) you buy a SPLA license from VMware for the duration you run the VM. It’s included in the VM list price
There are no SPLA licenses for client OS (e.g. Windows 7, Windows 8).
Licensing is built into the desktop price